Toeing the Line

The rector of Uphill had a question for his clergy colleagues the other day; even though apparently the archbishops (the same ones who wanted clergy to go nowhere near their churches during the first lockdown, even if they lived next door to them) are arguing that public worship should not cease after all this time round, the question asked is now irrelevant; but it still got me thinking. Assuming, as His Grace of Uphill did, that churches would remain open in the coming lockdown v.2, he worried that Christians might eventually be blamed for any continued spread of the epidemic in the same way that the media turned on students. If they did: I didn't notice much of it.

In fact I get the impression that every organisation, business and group is straining the guidance to justify carrying on. We've only had two groups using the church facilities since we reopened, a music exam board and a slimming class. The former's umbrella body are arguing they are an 'educational provider' and so should continue with a planned round of exams, while the latter's want to stay operating because of their 'wellbeing agenda'. Both these seem pretty optimistic interpretations of government guidance, to say the very least. They are little indicators that this set of restrictions, quite apart from being much looser than before, don't have the same degree of public solidarity behind them as the March ones did.

Even though a quiet communion service in Swanvale Halt church is hardly a high-risk event, I can quite understand why it along with every other religious service except funerals, should cease for a while if the broad aim is to reduce the total amount of social contacts people have; there's barely anyone not able to stake some sort of credible claim for staying in business, but someone has to make the sacrifice. Nevertheless, had public worship been permitted I would have had no embarrassment about keeping going. I find people are generally very sympathetic, but in truth the idea of arousing any sort of public ire had never occurred to me.

I wonder whether evangelical churches (such as Uphill) are likely to think about their worship differently from more catholic ones like Swanvale Halt, and that this may have emerged in my colleague's anxiety. An evangelical congregation is, perhaps, inclined to conceive worship as a gathering of God's people to celebrate: maybe they are more likely to think of themselves as a privileged group for being able to do so, and therefore to project a sense of resentment on  those outside the group. A more catholic account of worship sees it as a response to God's command, less about the self-defined Christian community than about him and about the wider world: a mass includes celebration, of course, but also lament, and is less an expression of what we feel as Christians than a declaration of the nature of God. It's a different, and I think tellingly different, emphasis.